On Tranquillity of Mind (20)

And I am delighted with Diogenes, who, when he saw his host in Sparta preparing with much ado for a certain festival, said, Does not a good man consider every day a festival? And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are sound of mind. For the universe is a most holy temple and most worthy of a god; into it man is introduced through birth as a spectator, not of hand-made or immovable images, but of those sensible representations of knowable things that the divine mind, says Plato,[*] has revealed, representations which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion, sun and moon and stars, rivers which ever discharge fresh water, and earth which sends forth nourishment for plants and animals. Since life is a most perfect initiation into these things and a ritual celebration of them, it should be full of tranquillity and joy, and not in the manner of the vulgar, who wait for the festivals of Cronus[*] and of Zeus and the Panathenaea and other days of the kind, at which to enjoy and refresh themselves, paying the wages of hired laughter to mimes and dancers. It is true that we sit there on

those occasions decorously in reverent silence, for no one wails while he is being initiated or laments as he watches the Pythian games or as he drinks at the festival of Cronus; but by spending the greater part of life in lamentation and heaviness of heart and carking cares men shame the festivals with which the god supplies us and in which he initiates us. And though men delight in sweetly sounding instruments and singing birds, and take pleasure in seeing animals romping and frisking, and, on the contrary, are displeased when they howl and bellow and look fierce; yet though they see that their own life is unsmiling and dejected and ever oppressed and afflicted by the most unpleasant experiences and troubles and unending cares, they not only do not provide themselves with some alleviation or ease-from what source could they do so? - but even when others urge them, they do not accept a word of admonition by following which they would acquiesce in the present without fault-finding, remember the past with thankfulness, and meet the future without fear or suspicion, with their hopes cheerful and bright.